For the first time ever, a northern European country secured the No 1 spot in tax and immigration consultancy Nomad Capitalist’s annual index of the World’s Best Passports ranking. And the country to take the top spot in 2025 is Ireland.
According to CNBC, Nomad Capitalist’s pattern of analysing passports and their international strengths varies from other rankings that only value their visa-free travel strength. In today’s ever-changing world, the Nomad Passport Index tracks how each country’s passport evolves on a yearly basis. While observing how the global influence of countries is changing, it ranks them on the basis of five key factors: visa-free travel (50%), taxation (20%), global perception (10%), dual citizenship (10%), and personal freedom (10%).
Criteria evaluating world’s highest-ranking passport
For information on the Travel parameter, the index relied on government data from 199 passport-issuing countries and territories, plus real-time intelligence and proprietary research. It includes a MobilityScore, which measures ease of travel, and focuses on visa-free travel, visa on arrival and eTA and eVisa.
The Taxation criterion looked at data from tax vendors, news sources and tax authorities. Countries are assigned scores from 10 to 50. Here, 10 indicates that the country taxes citizens no matter they live. Score of 20 or 30 showed that the country allows citizens to relocate to avoid tax. 40 goes to those that don’t tax foreign incomes of resident citizens and 50 is for those with zero tax.
Ireland passport finally gets the edge
Evaluating 199 citizenships, the Nomad Capitalist Passport Index 2025 put Ireland on top with a ‘Nomad Passport Score’ of 109. Last year, it lost the lead to Switzerland. However, this time, the latter slipped to a joint 2nd rank shared with Greece (score: 108.5). In addition to this year’s victory, Ireland tied for the No 1 rank with Luxembourg and Sweden in 2020.
“Ireland shook up the rankings, thanks to the country’s strong international reputation, business-friendly tax policies, and overall citizenship flexibility,” Nomad Capitalist’s research associate Javier Correa shared with CNBC Travel.
“In a turbulent year marked by shifting geopolitics and policy upheaval, Greece surged dramatically from sixth into joint second with Switzerland, reflecting its growing credibility among high-net-worth individuals, retirees, and global investors,” according to a press release announcing this year’s index, i.e. the ninth edition of the list.
World’s strongest vs weakest passports 2025
Ireland has been praised as the world’s strongest passport of 2025, according Irish citizens “the right to live and work freely across the EU and, uniquely, in the UK,” per the index. In addition to Ireland’s top stance, other countries in the top 10 strongest passports list are: Switzerland (2nd), Greece (2nd), Portugal (4), Malta (5th), Italy (5th), Luxembourg (7th), Finland (7th), Norway (7th), United Arab Emirates (10th), New Zealand (10th) and Iceland (10th). For those wondering, the United States held the joint 45th rank alongside San Marino.
Meanwhile, Pakistan, Iraq, Eritrea, Yemen and Afghanistan sit at the bottom of the table as the weakest passport, ranking from 195 to 199. See the full list here: nomadcapitalist.com/nomad-passport-index/
Where does India passport stand?
India shared the 148th spot with Comoros, earning a total score of 47.5 (Taxation: 20, Perception: 20, Dual Citizenship: 20, Freedom: 20). Last year’s index, it sat one seat above, sharing the 147th rank with Mozambique.
Earlier this year, the Henley Passport Index, which is billed as the “original ranking,” showed that India dropped from the 80th to 85th rank in the world’s most powerful passports list. The 19-year-old index relies on International Air Transport Association (IATA) data.